English Clauses Research Articles

PARSING AMBIGUOUS RELATIVE CLAUSES IN L2 ENGLISH

AbstractWe investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference (RC modifies NP1). We conducted an interpretation task with auditorily presented stimuli to examine whether prosodic cues determine attachment. Target items were manipulated for position of break and length of RC, NP1, and NP2. For both groups, break and length are significant. For the learners, proficiency interacts with break suggesting L1 transfer: lower proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to LA; higher proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to HA. Lower proficiency learners are more likely to choose LA overall, suggesting a recency effect. Our results confirm the importance of using aural stimuli when testing interpretation of ambiguous sentences.

Grammatical Characteristics of Vietnamese and English in Developing Bilingual Children.

Purpose Defining parameters for typical development in bilingual children's first and second languages can serve as the basis for accurate language assessment. This is the first study to characterize Vietnamese and English grammatical development in a sample of bilingual children. Method Participants were 89 Vietnamese-English bilingual children, aged 3-8 years. Children completed story retell tasks in Vietnamese and English. Stories were transcribed and analyzed for grammaticality, error patterns, subordination index, and types of subordinating clauses. Of key interest were associations with age and identifying developmental patterns that were shared across languages or unique to a given language. Results Age correlated with more measures in English than in Vietnamese, suggesting that older children had higher grammaticality and greater syntactic complexity in English than younger children. Children also produced greater syntactic complexity with age in Vietnamese, but not higher grammaticality. There were a set of error patterns shared across languages (e.g., object omission) and patterns specific to each language (e.g., classifier errors in Vietnamese, tense errors in English). While children produced nominal, adverbial, and relative clauses in Vietnamese and English, the proportion of each clause type differed by language. Conclusions Results from this typically developing sample provide a reference point to improve clinical practice. Characterizing developmental patterns in sentence structure in Vietnamese and English lays the groundwork for investigations of language disorders in this bilingual population.

The Role of Animacy in Children's Interpretation of Relative Clauses in English: Evidence From Sentence-Picture Matching and Eye Movements.

Subject relative clauses (SRCs) are typically processed more easily than object relative clauses (ORCs), but this difference is diminished by an inanimate head-noun in semantically non-reversible ORCs ("The book that the boy is reading"). In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g., "Where is the tractor that the cow is chasing"). In Experiment 1, 48 children (aged 4;5-6;4) and 32 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head-noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head-nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children; however, online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate an SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head-noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy. In Experiment 2, we repeated our design with inanimate (rather than animate) NP2s (e.g., "where is the tractor that the car is following") to investigate whether our online findings were due to increased visual surprisal at an inanimate as agent, or to similarity-based interference. We again found greater anticipation for an SRC in the inanimate condition, supporting our surprisal hypothesis. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children's interpretation of ORCs, whereas online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data. Overall measures of syntactic comprehension, inhibitory control, and verbal short-term memory and working memory were not predictive of children's accuracy in RC interpretation, with the exception of a positive correlation with a standardized measure of syntactic comprehension in Experiment 1.

The Translation of English Comment Clauses in Shakespeare's Othello into Arabic

Comment clauses (or parentheticals) are a type of clauses which are syntactically disconnected from the clause to which they are attached and which are syntactically incomplete (lack complementation).They show a reflection of the main clause,commentary or assessment on the main clause and hence show more spatial flexibility, lower tone, and semantic independence .
 The present study focuses on comment clauses as pragmatic markers and the implicit meaning carried by these clauses .The problem is that most translators overlook this type of clauses because of their unawareness of the implied meaning carried by such clauses,especially when they translate them.It is hypothesized that the interpretation of comment clauses is situational.To prove this hypothesis, ten texts have been arbitrarily selected from Shakespeare's Othello translated into Arabic by four well- known translators, namely: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra Muhammed Mustafa Badawi, Ghazi Gamal and Khalil Mutran. The study concludes that the interpretation of comment clauses depends largely on the situation in which they are used.The study also discloses that the failure in translating such clauses is due to the unawareness of the implicit meaning that the comment clauses carry (whether in spoken or written). Finally,the study recommends that translators should carefully deal with comment clauses wherever they come across them,for such a type of clauses could form a slippery area.

A lexicalist and word-based approach to the semantic composition of German and English clauses in the perfect

A lexicalist and word-based approach to the semantic composition of German and English clauses in the perfect

Re-constraining massive pied-piping: An argument for non-interrogative CPs

Unlike traditional wh-movement and obligatory pied-piping, massive pied-piping is restricted in the types of clauses in which it may occur. Heck (2004, 2008) argues that massive pied-piping constructions are restricted to non-subordinate clauses in English. This paper (i) investigates the availability of massive pied-piping of DPs in complements of know and surprise-type predicates; (ii) proposes a revised generalization on massive pied-piping that restricts the construction to non-interrogative clauses; and (iii) proposes a hybrid analysis that combines Cable's (2010) Q-movement analysis with Den Dikken's (2003) two-stage wh-movement operation, thus accounting for the wider set of environments covered by the revised generalization on massive pied-piping in English.

A Reconsideration of Grammatical Categorization in English: The Clause

Various models for categorizing grammatical units exist in the literature. Particularly nebulous, however, are terminologies for conceptualizing categories at the level of the clause. For example, the term complement has been used, confusingly sometimes, as both a functional term and, on some occasions, as a structural term. In this study, a model of categorization is proposed, which keeps functional classification separate from structural classification, in order that concepts used in grammatical analysis can be clearly understood and be applied more easily in text analysis. Accordingly, the specific aim of this study is to examine some already ‘accepted’ subcategories of the dependent clause and, in the process, propose a new approach for the analysis of this clause type. This approach, it is hoped, will remove (a) semantic considerations from the analysis of these grammatical units and (b) the confusion between the notional and syntactic description of the units. In the end, this work involves a reconsideration of some traditional ways of doing grammatical categorization with the hope that it will ease identification of grammatical categories. The overall goal is to offer a more consistent and structured approach to the grammatical analysis of the clause in English.

Material Processes in English Clause of Life Insurance: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Approach

The research is about the material processes that apply in English clause of Life Insurance. The data are taken from the brochure of Life Insurance in five different companies. They are analyzed based on the theories of systemic functional linguistics focusing on the material process. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method. The conclusions of the research are the lexical verbs describe the type of material processes in Life Insurance brochures there are offer, receive, protect, provide, customize, request, access, earn, allow, decrease, increase, lock, change, add, choose, take, pay, buy, build, work, help, and give. Then the role of the participant involved that are actor, goal, and recipient.

THE REALIZATION OF SPEECH FUNCTION IN ONANG – ONANG: HOW AND WHY?

The main objectives of this study are to investigate the realization of Speech Function in Onang – onang and the reason for their realization. This study is based on descriptive qualitative approach. The data are collected by applying documentary technique. The result of this study reveales that the process of realization of Speech Function in Onang – onang in Mood is realized both congruent and metaphorically. The reasons for realization of Speech Function in Onang- onang are power initiation, Politeness need and also there are different language systems and grammatical structures between North Padang Lawas language and English clause structure.

A subordinação na fala espontânea do inglês americano: um estudo das orações completivas

Neste artigo, apresenta-se uma análise das orações completivas na fala do inglês americano, tendo como base teórica a Language into Act Theory (L-AcT, CRESTI, 2000). A partir dessa teoria, a subordinação completiva é analisada em sua interface com a articulação informacional, levando em conta a organização pragmática da sintaxe da fala. Após efetuar o mapeamento das orações completivas explícitas no minicorpus de inglês americano extraído do Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English (CAVALCANTE; RAMOS, 2016) e dos padrões informacionais associados a estas estruturas sintáticas, compararam-se os resultados com dados já levantados para o italiano e português brasileiro, nos respectivos minicorpora extraídos do C-ORAL-ROM (CRESTI; MONEGLIA, 2005) e C-ORAL-BRASIL (RASO; MELLO, 2012).

Synchronic Variability in the Complementation Profile of REMEMBER: Finite vs Non-Finite Clauses in Indian and British English

This paper explores the prevalent simplification of morphosyntactic features occurring in Postcolonial Englishes (cf. e.g. Williams 1987) by addressing the hypothesis that finite complement clauses (CCs) should be more common in these varieties than a non-finite counterpart due to their higher explicitness. The hypothesis is tested in two varieties of English, British English as a reference variety and Indian English, exploring the complementation profile of REMEMBER by means of a corpus-based approach. In addition, a variable analysis aims at shedding light on the language-internal features potentially conditioning the choice between CCs in competition. The results partially confirm the hypothesis; there is a larger proportion of finite CCs in Indian English than in British English but non-finite CCs are the most common option in the two varieties. Furthermore, not only simplification, but also other factors such as substrate influence or second-language acquisition processes may be responsible for the distribution found in Indian English. As for language-internal features, while some factors condition the choice across varieties, others are variety-specific.

Past Participle Agreement in Codeswitching Contexts

In this work we will test the ability of nominal gender to be ‘infinitely reusable as an “active goal” for the operation Agree’ (Carstens, 2010) in mixed Italian/ English clauses. In particular, we will analyse long-distance gender relations that are realised outside the DP domain in compound ergative clauses, where an Italian ergative past participle must agree in gender (and number) with the DP-syntactic subject: specifically, the ‘active goal’ for the operation Agree may be either a monolingual English DP or a mixed DP. Moreover, the mixed ergative clauses will be embedded under an English or an Italian matrix clause, in order to see if the language of the latter affects acceptability judgements. Crucially, we aimed to assess which mixed agreement patterns are preferred in codeswitching contexts, as well as the role played by the language of the matrix clause. Furthermore, we have tested and shown to what extent the Matrix Language Framework is adequate to account for the acceptability of the various mixed combinations.

A Corpus-Based Study of Hypotactic and Paratactic Thematic Relations in English and Urdu Clause Complexes

The present research inquires the paratactic and hypotactic thematic relations in terms of their grammatical realization, functional significance (Halliday, 1994) and thematic progression (McCabe, 1999). In the paratactic clause complexes, two or more independent clauses are joined by the coordinating conjunctions while in the hypotactic clause complexes, two or more independent and dependent clauses are joined by the subordinating conjunctions. The specific objectives of this research are: (1) to define the grammatical realization of paratactic and hypotactic thematic structures in the English and the Urdu texts, (2) to describe the functional significance of paratactic and hypotactic thematic structures particular to information flow and thematic progression in the English and the Urdu texts, and (3) to discuss how effectively the paratactic and hypotactic thematic structures in the English text have been translated into the Urdu text. The English text, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and its translated Urdu text, Bikharti Duniya by Ikram Ullah have been selected for this study. These texts have been annotated through the annotation scheme of UAM Corpus Tool (O’Donnell, 2008). The results reveal that the Urdu text uses multiple equivalents of conjunction either paratactic or hypotactic in the English text. Thematic progression patterns in both texts are mostly constant, linear and peripheral. The unmotivated displacement of paratactic and hypotactic themes causes ambiguity and change the information flow in the Urdu text. The present research is significant to support the systemic functional grammar of Urdu taking into account of English.

Parallelism between Imperative Clauses and Interrogative Clauses in English

Inverted English imperative clauses such as Don’t you talk to everyone! share the same word order and scope interactions with interrogative clauses. This suggests that there seems to be parallelism between interrogative clauses and imperative clauses. With much emphasis focused on similarities between imperative clauses and interrogative clauses, this paper proposes that English imperative clauses undergo T-to-C movement as do English interrogative clauses. More specifically, when T and C in imperative clauses show the same matched feature with [IMP], they undergo T-to-C movement, which results in inverted imperative clauses (formal imperative clauses). On the other hand, if T and C in imperative clauses do not share the feature, there is no T-to-C movement, which yields non-inverted imperative clauses (‘economical’ imperative clauses). In other words, imperative clauses have two different types of syntactic structures whether they undergo T-to-C movement or not. We argue that two distinct structures of imperative clauses follow from the fact that T in imperatives has the mood feature [IMP] aside from C.

Motivations for positional variant of reporting clause in English and Chinese

Under the systemic-functional linguistic (henceforward SFL) framework, the phenomenon of (in)direct speech is discussed under the notion of projection. The special nature of projection has generated a great deal of discussion on its thematic structure, its interpersonal meaning in news register and others. However, the motivation for the positional variant of the reporting clause has not received enough attention. This article attempts to explore this issue through a deductive and corpus-based comparative approach. A small corpus of English and Chinese online news reveals that there is a higher frequency of the reporting clause that occurs in the post position in English than Chinese (23% vs none). It is argued that in English, in addition to textual motivation, an important motivation for the positional variant of the reporting clause is logical, while in Chinese, the taxis of projection may be inherently paratactic. Thus, there is no motivation to eliminate the dominant status of the reporting clause by putting it finally. The difference may ultimately originate from the dominant status of Mood structures of the two languages. With this hypothesis, this article also explains why free indirect speech is relatively more favored in the first paragraphs of news stories in English.

Levels of Reality

Two fundamental aspects of conceptual and linguistic structure are examined in relation to one another: organization into strata, each a baseline giving rise to the next by elaboration; and the conceptions of reality implicated at successive levels of English clause structure. A clause profiles an occurrence (event or state) and grounds it by assessing its epistemic status (location vis-à-vis reality). Three levels are distinguished in which different notions of reality correlate with particular structural features. In baseline clauses, grounded by “tense,” the profiled occurrence belongs to baseline reality (the established history of occurrences). Basic clauses incorporate perspective (passive, progressive, and perfect), and since grounding includes the grammaticized modals, as well as negation, basic reality is more elaborate. A basic clause expresses a proposition, comprising the grounded structure and the epistemic status specified by basic grounding. At higher strata, propositions are themselves subject to epistemic assessment, in which conceptualizers negotiate their validity; propositions accepted as valid constitute propositional reality. Propositions are assessed through interactive grounding, in the form of questioning and polarity focusing, and by complementation, in which the matrix clause indicates the status of the complement.

Verbal ‘RATHER’: No Verbless Finite Clause in English

This paper aims to discuss an English parochial construction, ‘would rather [CPthat [...]],’ in “I’d rather that you didn’t mention the price” and “My wife would rather that we didn’t see each other any more” Assuming that ‘rather’ is an adverb as defined in all English dictionaries available commercially as well as on-and off-line, ‘would rather CP’ construction renders an intriguing issue with respect to the clausal type, since the matrix TP obviously lacks a lexical verb, yielding a verbless finite clause with a fully embedded CP in it. Swan (1980: 519), Quirk, et. al (1985: 1183), Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 1003), Carter & McCarthy (2006), Klippenstein (2012), and Wood (2013), Merriam-Webster (2016: 490) as well as many on-line sites including Barron TOEFFL (2011) grammar units have all presented the construction ‘would rather CP...’ and provided with the meaning, usages, and its idiomatic status. Based on the data from Klippenstein (2012) and Wood (2013), this paper proposes a SubjunctP above the lexical VP which is occupied by a V ‘rather’. The lack of lexical verb in this construction is accounted for so that the generalization still holds that there is no verbless finite clause in English. The lexical V, with a null spell-out, retains the categorial feature V with the semantic residue of the verbal ‘rather’. The etymological and historical evidence backs up the categorial status of ‘rather’. Furthermore, since the verbal ‘rather’ is used normally with Subjunctive in meaning, it is argued to project as SubjunctP with [±Subjunct] features so that it affects Tense/Aspect/Mood of the embedded clause.

On the Use and Familiarity of Copular Clauses in English and Turkish

Copula "be" is an essential element of English language as it stands for a bridge between the subject and its predicates. In spite of its being at lexical level in English, it is also seen as an affix in some other languages. When the issue is Turkish language, it used to appear at lexical level in early Turkish use, but is an inflectional morpheme in contemporary forms. Both English and Turkish bear some similar semantic usages of copula "be" in different clause types. This current study is to analyze the copular clauses that appear in English and compare them with those in Turkish. A further empirical data also aims to investigate the familiarity of the native speakers of Turkish in terms of the copular clauses in their mother tongue.

Clarence Green, Patterns and development in the English clause system: A corpus-based grammatical overview. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2017. Pp. ix + 199.

Clarence Green, Patterns and development in the English clause system: A corpus-based grammatical overview. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, 2017. Pp. ix + 199.

\u2018Make\u2019 causatives in English and Mandarin

Make causatives in English involving a DP or CP subject, an experiencer, and an adjective describing the experiencer’s psychological state exhibit properties strongly implying that those subjects are derived. The Mandarin equivalents of make causatives show similar (although not identical) behavior, indicating that these properties are common to the construction type. In this paper, we present an account of 'make' causatives in both languages in which the DP/CP subjects in question begin as low source arguments that are raised syntactically to the subject position. We show how this proposal explains the relevant properties in both Mandarin and English. We also contrast the behavior of 'make' causatives involving a psych adjective with those involving a non-psych adjective, proposing very different structures that reflect different selections by 'make' in the two cases. In brief, with psych adjectives 'make' is triadic, selecting an experiencer, an AP, and a source phrase in both Mandarin and English. With non-psych adjectives, make is dyadic, selecting two clauses in English.